Oblique of pure reason

«Science, at bottom, is really
anti-intellectual. It always distrusts
pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact. [...]

The business of a man of science in this world is not to speculate
and dogmatize, but to demonstrate. To be sure, he sometimes needs the
aid of hypothesis, but hypothesis, at best, is only a pragmatic
stop-gap, made use of transiently because all the necessary facts are
not yet known. The appearance of a new one in contempt of it destroys
it instantly. At its most plausible and useful it simply represents an
attempt to push common sense an inch or two over the borders of the
known. At its worst it is only idle speculation, and no more
respectable than the soaring of metaphysicians.»